How We Got to Coney Island

The Development of Mass Transportation in Brooklyn and Kings County

Brian Cudahy

Publication Year: 2002

How We Got to Coney Island is the definitive history of mass transportation in Brooklyn. Covering 150 years of extraordinary growth, Cudahy tells the complete story of the trolleys, street cars, steamboats, and railways that helped create New York's largest borough---and the remarkable system that grew to connect the world's most famous seaside resort with Brooklyn, New York City across the river, and, ultimately, the rest of the world. Includes tables, charts, photographs, and maps.

Cover

Title Page, Copyright

Contents

Foreword

WHAT MENTAL PICTURE ARISES when one thinks of Coney Island?
Persons not from the New York area will probably think first of
photographs of the beach crowded with thousands of people on a
warm summer afternoon. Another image is that of the Steeplechase
amusement park. The images are not incorrect, but they are
incomplete. Today, the image of Coney...

Preface

AN IRREGULAR PROCESSION of offshore islands helps define the eastern
seaboard of the United States. Formed in many cases of nothing
more substantial than shifting sand, and subject to constant
change by the natural forces of wind and tide, these islands evoke
pleasant images of rolling surf breaking...

1. A Primer on Coney Island and Brooklyn

TO ESTABLISH some geographic terms of reference for the largely
historical narrative that follows, let us take a brief look at the lay
of the land in Coney Island today. And what could possibly be a
more appropriate way to explore Coney Island in the early years
of the twenty-first century than by taking an imaginary ride in a
hot air balloon from the eastern...

2. Street Railways (1854-1890)

FEW MUNICIPALITIES in the world ever enjoyed as close an association
with street railways as Brooklyn once did. The National
League baseball team that currently plays its home games in Los
Angeles and whose white uniform shirts have ‘‘Dodgers’’ written
across them in blue script...

3. Iron Piers and Iron Steamboats (1845-1918)

THANKS TO THE DISTINCTIVE GEOGRAPHY of western Long Island, the
shortest distance between New York City and Coney Island is a
water route rather than a land route. Prior to the construction of
railway lines across Kings County in the 1860s and afterward,
travel by water was also the fastest and the easiest route. In the
mid-nineteenth century when...

4. Excursion Railways (1864-1890)

AS CONEY ISLAND GREW in popularity as a seasonal seaside resort,
five steam railways were constructed in Kings County in the 1860s
and the 1870s to carry passengers there from the southern limits
of the city of Brooklyn or from steamboat and ferry connections
with Manhattan. The rights-of-way used...

5. Elevated Railways (1880-1890)

ELEVATED RAILWAYS operating along structures built over busy
urban thoroughfares played an important role in the development
of local transport in Brooklyn and Kings County during the final
two decades of the nineteenth century. Two Brooklyn elevated
lines of the 1880s were eventually...

6. Merger, Consolidation, and the Emergence of the BRT (1890-1900)

IN THE HISTORY of public transportation in Brooklyn and Kings
County, from Colonial times to the present day, no decade was as
transformational or as important as the 1890s. When the 1890s
began, Brooklyn was served by a number of independent street
railway companies whose principal motive power was the horse;
elevated railways with trains...

7. Subways and the Nickel Empire (1900-1940)

THE AMALGAMATION of a variety of Kings County transport properties
under the aegis of a unified Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company
(BRT) as the nineteenth century became the twentieth brought
measured improvement in travel to and from Coney Island. Now
electrified rapid transit service was available...

8. Coney Island at War (1940-1945)

IT WAS DURING THE YEARS leading up to the Second World War that
a singularly controversial public figure, Robert Moses, began to
exert an influence on the subsequent growth and development of
New York. While many unhesitatingly blame him for the downfall
of Coney Island, a more balanced analysis...

9. After VJ Day (1945-2000)

IN COMPARISON WITH earlier eras, the years between the end of the
Second World War and the beginning of the twenty-first century
saw rather limited change to the style of transportation that served
Coney Island. This is not to say that things were completely static
over this interval with respect to Coney Island transportation, and
Coney Island itself saw a near...

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